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Sunday July 13, 2014 5:30 AM

Awhile ago, I wrote that folks in the Union County village of Magnetic Springs are planning a
big celebration Aug. 8-10 commemorating that community’s rich history.

The town became famous in the 1870s when a farmer decided to dig a pond to provide water for his
crops and gravel to put on the muddy roads in his area. While he was digging, he hit an artesian
spring that spurted out water with strange magnetic qualities.

It was said that a knife blade left overnight in a bucket of the water would take on magnetic
qualities and that nails would adhere to it.

Not long after, word spread that the water had mysterious healing powers when sick people bathed
in it and drank it. Thousands of people seeking the healing waters flocked to the quiet village and
turned it into a boomtown that boasted four large hotels and many boarding houses to accommodate
the visitors. The hoopla continued well into the 1900s.

That column prompted an email from Marilyn St. Clair Richey, of Centerville, who told me that
her father, Edward “Eddie” St. Clair, of Logan, received treatment in Magnetic Springs in 1929 when
he was 16 years old.

She said he had Bright’s disease, a catch-all term at the time for kidney disease. Her father’s
illness was believed to have been caused by untreated strep throat, she said, noting that there
were no antibiotics in those days.

Eddie was very ill and wasn’t getting any better, so the local doctor advised his father that
perhaps he should take his son to Magnetic Springs for treatment.

I called St. Clair to find out more about his visit. He told me he had stayed in Conrod’s Hotel,
which was owned by a doctor. The doctor examined young St. Clair. “He told my father, ‘We’ll feed
him and boil it out of him.’ ”

“We took hot baths in the mornings, and they boiled the poison out of you,” he said. During the
rest of the day, he ate, drank the water and was given massages to make him feel better.

He spent several weeks at Magnetic Springs on three occasions, taking the baths and returning
home between trips. After his third stay, the doctor told his father, “He’s cured now. You can take
him home.”

When they left for the final time, they took milk cans full of the water home so he could
continue to drink it.

After that, St. Clair grew up fit as a fiddle and lived a strenuous life, he said. He farmed and
drove a school bus for decades. He and his wife, Opal, now deceased, had three daughters, two of
them twins.

There’s one more thing you should know about Edward St. Clair: He turns 101 years old on this
very day.